DC Dual Force presents a fairly generic multiplayer focused card game with a few varied elements and single player comic episodes with scenes and storylines taken from comics to play through that have some effort to them but are never actually interesting to play.
The way the game works is that you choose two leaders from factions that include Might (characters including ones like Superman/Wonder Woman), Tactics (Batman/Cyborg), Energy (Zatana/Flash), Anarchy (Harley/Doomsday), and Tyranny (Poison Ivy/Black Adam) and are than able to make a 40 card deck with the cards you have that include the factions that your leaders belong to. The board has six spaces to deploy characters with your heroes starting on the the bottom left and right, characters played in front of others block the ones behind them from being attacked (certain abilities aside). You start with a bronze token, then get two, then one becomes silver, both silver, one gold, and last both gold with those tokens being used to play cards that either have a free, bronze, silver, or gold cost associated with them or possibly with their deploy abilities. Each character might have passive and active abilities and their own damage and health stats, you choose who or if they attack each turn hoping to defeat your opponents two leaders to win the game. Each leader starts with their own health value (typically somewhere between 18-24) and might have a passive ability as well as a skill you can activate after they gain enough charges, a charge is gained on each turn other than the first and possibly by certain cards or characters played and these skills might activate varied abilities and/or give your leader a temporary damage stat that allows them to attack like another character.
There are over 300 cards and around 4 leaders per faction and having those two leaders and their abilities is an interesting touch and the factions give you different kinds of tactics to focus a deck around but most everything else is just too generic and not a great use of DC characters. There are so many cards and character abilities that can just kill one, all, or move cards back to your hand and your limited card draws unless you build a deck focused on drawing more cards combined with the natural advantage the first player can have with possibly multiple characters being readied before yours can lead to frequent dull moments or ones where you know you've lost before the game even really started. Some leaders like Aquaman and Batman seem significantly better than others and having those times where you play Superman and Hal Jordan for a turn just to have your opponents turn be the I play my kill everything cards, and you two do that back and forth until someone starts drawing non character cards they don't have a use for at the time and lose because they can't do anything are frequent and boring.
It's pretty easy to unlock cards. I paid $10 just to have access to the other half of locked off comics available to subscribers and did most of the challenges available in about a months time and have access to every card except for some of the rarest and some leaders and have more than enough in game free atom currency that I could use to get access to whatever I wanted if I needed something for a deck type. The artwork on the cards is ok, nothing great like in something like the Lord of the Rings Fantasy Flight card game or some of the alternate art Marvel Snap cards but decent. You can unlock "shiny" versions of cards and while many of those are just kind of a sparkly effect it was nice to see that effect be different for some cards that it seems less appropriate for or added visual effects to certain cards like a Batman card having the smoke in his card become animated. There aren't too many unique in game effects but some cards have their own animations like playing Wonder Woman's lasso will show a lasso grab and move an opponent's card or playing Green Arrow who has an ability to fire arrows at enemy cards when he deploys will show an arrow shooting up from his card and landing on your target.
The comics would be an interesting element and they do add a bit extra to it where each comic might have their own events or choices that can give you different bonuses or access to different cards and leader options but your base decks in these modes is typically bad (and doesn't let you actually view what is in it) and the AI ranges from just being bad to being near suicidal.
At release there seemed to be more problems with the UI but that seems to have been worked out, it's still not all organized well but it seems to function correctly.
While the game continues to get patches and new content, I can't see it lasting that long due to the very limited player count.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1730584299781652491
The way the game works is that you choose two leaders from factions that include Might (characters including ones like Superman/Wonder Woman), Tactics (Batman/Cyborg), Energy (Zatana/Flash), Anarchy (Harley/Doomsday), and Tyranny (Poison Ivy/Black Adam) and are than able to make a 40 card deck with the cards you have that include the factions that your leaders belong to. The board has six spaces to deploy characters with your heroes starting on the the bottom left and right, characters played in front of others block the ones behind them from being attacked (certain abilities aside). You start with a bronze token, then get two, then one becomes silver, both silver, one gold, and last both gold with those tokens being used to play cards that either have a free, bronze, silver, or gold cost associated with them or possibly with their deploy abilities. Each character might have passive and active abilities and their own damage and health stats, you choose who or if they attack each turn hoping to defeat your opponents two leaders to win the game. Each leader starts with their own health value (typically somewhere between 18-24) and might have a passive ability as well as a skill you can activate after they gain enough charges, a charge is gained on each turn other than the first and possibly by certain cards or characters played and these skills might activate varied abilities and/or give your leader a temporary damage stat that allows them to attack like another character.
There are over 300 cards and around 4 leaders per faction and having those two leaders and their abilities is an interesting touch and the factions give you different kinds of tactics to focus a deck around but most everything else is just too generic and not a great use of DC characters. There are so many cards and character abilities that can just kill one, all, or move cards back to your hand and your limited card draws unless you build a deck focused on drawing more cards combined with the natural advantage the first player can have with possibly multiple characters being readied before yours can lead to frequent dull moments or ones where you know you've lost before the game even really started. Some leaders like Aquaman and Batman seem significantly better than others and having those times where you play Superman and Hal Jordan for a turn just to have your opponents turn be the I play my kill everything cards, and you two do that back and forth until someone starts drawing non character cards they don't have a use for at the time and lose because they can't do anything are frequent and boring.
It's pretty easy to unlock cards. I paid $10 just to have access to the other half of locked off comics available to subscribers and did most of the challenges available in about a months time and have access to every card except for some of the rarest and some leaders and have more than enough in game free atom currency that I could use to get access to whatever I wanted if I needed something for a deck type. The artwork on the cards is ok, nothing great like in something like the Lord of the Rings Fantasy Flight card game or some of the alternate art Marvel Snap cards but decent. You can unlock "shiny" versions of cards and while many of those are just kind of a sparkly effect it was nice to see that effect be different for some cards that it seems less appropriate for or added visual effects to certain cards like a Batman card having the smoke in his card become animated. There aren't too many unique in game effects but some cards have their own animations like playing Wonder Woman's lasso will show a lasso grab and move an opponent's card or playing Green Arrow who has an ability to fire arrows at enemy cards when he deploys will show an arrow shooting up from his card and landing on your target.
The comics would be an interesting element and they do add a bit extra to it where each comic might have their own events or choices that can give you different bonuses or access to different cards and leader options but your base decks in these modes is typically bad (and doesn't let you actually view what is in it) and the AI ranges from just being bad to being near suicidal.
At release there seemed to be more problems with the UI but that seems to have been worked out, it's still not all organized well but it seems to function correctly.
While the game continues to get patches and new content, I can't see it lasting that long due to the very limited player count.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1730584299781652491